Big Questions in Star Formation

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0. What is the nature of supersonic MHD turbulence in weakly ionized plasmas?

  • -Why does Fleck's hypothesis, which implies

  • has Kolmogorov scaling, work so well?
  • -How do the density distributions depend on the macroscopic turbulence properties?

1. What maintains the turbulence in molecular clouds?

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  • -Is this turbulence almost universal?
  • -What leads to deviations from universal behavior, such as in regions of high-mass star formation?
  • -How does the level of turbulence determine the structure of molecular clouds?
  • -Are internal sources of energy shared throughout a cloud?

Does the virtual editor work in Safari?

Some features do work, but tables still do not.

2. What is the role of magnetic fields in star formation?

  • -How do magnetic fields affect the rate of star formation?
  • -What is the role of magnetic fields in mass and angular momentumtransfer in circumstellar disks, both due to the MRI andprotostellar winds?
  • -Why do stars have such small magnetic fluxes?

3. What sets the rate of star formation?

  • -Is the rate different in galactic bulges and in elliptical galaxies from that in disks? (This would imply an evolution with redshift.)
  • -how much does the mean SFE vary with cloud mass, and why is the SFE dispersion so large?
  • -how long do GMCs live in different environments?

4. What determines the IMF?

  • -What determines the characteristic stellar mass?
  • -Does the IMF of stars today vary with physical conditions?-In particular, brown dwarfs may be exponentially sensitiveto initial conditions (e.g., the theory of Padoan and Nordlund)

5. How do massive stars form?

  • -How do they overcome radiation pressure?
  • -What are the initial conditions that lead to massive star formation?
  • -Why are massive stars always formed as part of clusters?
  • -What is the nature of disks and outflows in massive protostars?

6. How do star clusters form?

  • -What determines the initial cluster mass function?
  • -Is the distribution of stellar masses within a cluster established prior to cluster formation, or after the cluster has begun forming stars?

7. How do cores collapse and disks accrete at various stages?

  • -what is the resolution of the luminosity problem in low mass star formation?(are early infall rates higher than current predictions?)===
  • -are purely hydrodynamic (non-self-gravitating) processes important to disk accretion?
  • -how does planet formation affect the evolution of disks and the accretion process?

OTHER QUESTIONS

    • How do stars form in the Galactic Center?